You would not be able to do that, as the MBP will still power the RAM, so it would likely die within approximately 4 days on a full charge. It loses ~1% per hour sleeping.

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Hmmm, did not know that. Is there any way to change the sleep settings (say, like go to a "deep sleep") or does the MBA just have a different kind of firmware installed? Is there something technically preventing Apple from doing this on a MBP?

There is nothing preventing apple from doing that. However the hibernate function wouldn't really gain you anything over just shutting it down. MBA just has either firmware or a piece of the OS that puts it in its own kind of sleep, where it writes the RAM to the SSD, but will still turn right on when you open it. If you use the hibernate (deep sleep) mode on a MBP, you have to press the power button and it basically reboots.

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